Felicia, 29 & Andy, 27

Austin, TX

Wedding date: Feb 14, 2009

Number of guests: 60

Wedding cost: $14,000 (does not include honeymoon and wedding rings)

Wedding ceremony location: St. Thomas More in Austin, TX

Wedding reception location: Cool River Café in Austin, TX

Why did you have an intimate wedding?

We truly wanted to share our special day with people who are close to us. Both of us come from Indonesia with a traditional Chinese background where big weddings are the norm. Both my brothers had more than 800 guests on their wedding day! We did not want to have a wedding to impress the elders and friends who we aren’t that close to. Plus, we got to spend a whole lot more for our honeymoon in Maui. We chose Valentine’s Day to get married because we are both truly bad at remembering dates. So, not only was the date romantic, but convenient. Another plus for choosing Valentine’s Day is that it’s not a popular wedding date.

Your closet is stacked with linens. Your cupboards are piled high with dishes. There’s a toaster on your countertop beside the brand new coffee maker. Come to think of it, you’ve got just about everything you need, except for one thing: a vacation.  That’s where your honeymoon comes in.

And thanks to Buy Our Honeymoon, you can forgo the traditional wedding guest registry, and have your wedding guests help you pay for your honeymoon. (I wish this was around when I got hitched!)

Got your heart set on a candlelit dinner on the beach? Your guests can help you pay for it. What about horseback riding in the mountains or a snorkeling adventure on the reef?

Your guests can purchase activities and excursions, meals, upgrades, contributions to your air fare or accommodation – or just about anything you like.

How does it work? Simply pay a one-time setup fee of USD $64. Your registry can be linked to your PayPal account, so that guests can pay the value of their gifts to you directly using a credit card.

Owner, Shelley Green, says Buy Our Honeymoon was inspired by her own wedding in 2005.

“We set up the site for our own wedding in 2005 and we were so encouraged by the fantastic response from our guests that we decided to launch the site as a business,” she says, adding that it’s now the UK’s leading honeymoon registry with hundreds of customers from the USA, Canada and internationally.

Want to learn more? Sign up for a free 7-day trial. No obligations.

Although this really is a labor of love, it’s time to pay some bills. I am now accepting advertisers here at IntimateWeddings.com.

Along with banner ads, you will notice sponsor posts in the upcoming weeks. All blog posts that are paid for will be clearly marked ‘Sponsored Post’. I want to make this REALLY clear. I’ve spent nearly 10 years as a journalist, and I have no respect for companies that try to pass off advertising as editorial content. So if you read the words, ‘Sponsored Post’, you will know that a company has paid for this post. That said, I will be selective in choosing who becomes a sponsor. I will be choosing companies that I feel are a good fit for Intimate Weddings, and who I feel would be of interest to my readers. And sponsored posts will be added on a limited basis.

So, stay tuned for lots of great EDITORIAL content in the upcoming weeks, with a dash of clearly marked paid content sprinkled in here and there.

I’ve never been fond of shiny limousines, and stretch Lincoln Navigators or Hummers really aren’t my thing. For Darin and I, the perfect wedding getaway car was a white, vintage Rolls Royce.

Vintage cars are demand these days. Not surprising, considering that just about everything vintage is white hot. And speaking of hot, remember that some of these beauties don’t have air conditioning. If you are planning a summer wedding,  you might want to keep this in mind. You probably won’t care about a lack of air conditioning when you are exiting the wedding, but if you are using a vintage car to arrive at the ceremony you might want to ensure you can keep your cool.

Amanda over at VintageGlam, has a great blog post with advice on how to find the perfect vintage getaway car for your wedding. She points out that one of the best places to find vintage car rentals is through classic car clubs. I don’t know about you, but in these parts, cruise night is a big event. Every week during the summer, the local vintage car buffs gather together and show off their ‘babies.’ Perhaps there is something like is in your part of the world?

Save

I wrote this as a guest column for DIY Bride. I thought I’d share it here because I know some of you will relate.

I cannot see the laundry room floor. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, given that its godawful linoleum, but it’s after 11 pm and I’m getting married. Tomorrow. That’s right tomorrow – and there’s a one inch layer of stems and leaves on my floor.

It’s the first time in my life I have arranged flowers. Unless you count the wildflowers I routinely jam into mason jars during the summer months. I don’t know a thing about flower arranging – and here I am arranging my bridal bouquet, the maid of honor’s bouquet and the wedding centerpieces?

I am not insane. My mother has taken plenty of courses on flower arranging and she is leading the crew, which consists of my sister-in-law, my maid of honor and me. Still, I begin to feel panic set in. Panic that it will take all night and that I’ll wake up looking like an ogre.  Panic that the flowers won’t turn out. I do not let on that I am feeling this way. I focus on the task at hand.

It’s edging towards 12:30 am and finally the last flower has found its rightful home. We all breathe a happy and tired sigh of relief that our night of DIY flower arranging is not only over –  it’s a whopping success. The centerpieces are beautiful, the bouquets are lovely – and I saved a bundle.

That was eight years ago. And it’s one of the memories that stands out the most about my wedding.

DIY is not the easy route.  In fact, sometimes DIY can be downright painful.

“Am I doing this right?”

“Will I ever get this done?”

“Do these look like crap or am I not seeing straight because it’s so bloody late?”

“These don’t look like they do in the Martha Stewart magazine. Oops, I missed step five.”

DIY can be a struggle – even for uber creative types. Heaps of time and effort go into choosing the right projects, finding tutorials and hunting down supplies (especially if you are pinching pennies).  And that’s before you’ve sat down and got down and dirty with your project.

But you know what? The feeling of satisfaction from pulling it off is like no other.

As musician and songwriter Bruce Cockburn writes: “Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.”

Remember this as you stand on your own laundry room floor, ankle deep in stems and leaves, praying for a miracle.